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Of course, the downside to noise-focused cases is that you can often outperform them both acoustically and thermally with an open panel, since you don’t have to run RPM as high to counter the front panel. The 56.2-degree standardized fan result has it toward the bottom of the chart, second-worst only to the Bitfenix Enso. That’s not a good result, and reinforces the Define 7’s particularly weak CPU cooling.
Introducing Define 7 Compact
Boards this size are uncommon, but there’s very little stopping the Define 7 from fitting it, or at least being easily moddable to fit it. As it is, the reinforcing lip at the edge of the motherboard tray and the lack of standoff holes would make it risky at best to install the SR-3 in this case. Fractal could sell a tray extension for the Define 7 as it is now, but the raised lip would still touch the back of the board. This is something very few cases get right, because “E-ATX” doesn’t really mean anything when it comes to a defined width; at least, not in the same way that ATX does.
Fractal Define 7 Case Review: High Build Quality & Thermal Challenges
Since the steel side panel can’t be screwed into place, there needs to be an extra line of reinforcement to keep bulky cables from pushing the panel open. To that end, we’d like a couple screw holes on either the plastic cover or the steel side panel to allow us the option to screw them down tightly. Even still, with this noted, the case is doing better in CPU thermals than a few others on the chart. An extra 1dBA worth of fan RPMs honestly wouldn’t change much in this setup, anyway, but might propel it more toward the O11 XL or Helios.
Open layout for massive headroom
The included Multibracket lets you convertany unused fan position to an HDD, SSD or pump mount. The series debuts with a tour of a tranquil upstate New York retreat designed with Passive House principles. The Define 7 and the Define 7 XL are available worldwide now, and will soon be complemented with a unique range of accessories to help customize your building experience.
Compact yet spacious
The tempered-glass side panel is attached to a metal frame that eliminates the need for rubber-coated locating pins or hinges. The panel on the opposite side of the chassis is a solid stamped steel panel with a thick layer of sound damping material and is held in place by the same push-to-lock system as the tempered glass panel. On the right is a much more complex and irregular pattern with recognizably similar fractal properties, a traditional urban neighborhood in Baghdad, Iraq. Notice the similar patterning at different scales of bordering spaces and alternating patterns of indoor-outdoor space. For the CPU-sorted results, the Define 7 improves from 62.5 degrees stock to 56.2 degrees just by replacing the fans with significantly better ones.
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By default, as shipped from the factory, the chassis can be outfitted with seven 3.5-inch spinning disks and two SSDs. The Define 7 has a single 5.25-inch drive bay slot for those of you still using optical drives or 5.25-inch drive bay accessories. The Fractal Design Define 7 mid-tower chassis comes in black, grey or white with the option of a tempered glass side panel.
If you were to fit another expansion card in here, it’d potentially have drastic impact on GPU thermals since most of the air comes through the rear of the case. The Define 7 lists support for E-ATX motherboards, and it does indeed have support for motherboards up to 11 inches in width by our measurement. We think Fractal has missed a trick here by not allowing even wider boards. The EVGA SR-3 that we’ll be using to build a production system in an upcoming stream is an E-ATX board 13 inches wide.
GN Case Testing Bench
It’s a lightweight load, and goes to show that only the truly terrible designs -- like the DTW case -- are able to deviate in big ways from the mean. As soon as the Define 7 was out of the box, we noticed how lightly tinted the glass was. The Define 7 TG comes in both dark tint and light tint versions, and the light tinted version with a white interior is a stark contrast to almost every other tinted glass case we’ve reviewed. For whatever reason, case manufacturers have tended towards extremely dark glass tints for years, which is a step back from the transparent plastic windows that were more common in the olden days (a decade ago). The choice is there for customers who want the dark tint, but we much prefer clear glass that lets the white interior shine. The area behind the motherboard tray features plenty of tie down points and integrated cable guides to aid in cable management.
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Nexus+ 2 fan hub
While I would like a quiet case, I also want great airflow and optimal cooling to ensure maximum performance (without any throttling due to heat). Some noise due to fans is okay if it helps to ensure optimal performance... Fractal’s Define 7 shows itself again underwhelming for CPU performance, ranking toward the lower third of results. The Define 7 is near the S2 Vision, which is one of the worst cases we’ve tested recently, and the C700P. That said, none of these are particularly bad in CPU thermals, and Blender doesn’t establish much of a top-to-bottom difference to begin with.
From an evolutionary point of view, it’s evident that we perceive these relationships because they are supremely useful to us. They help us understand the structure of choices that our environments present, and how the different alternatives might offer us different benefits. Importantly, fractal urban structures typically provide multiple combinations of benefits that work in synergy. And our pleasurable perception of fractals is probably related to this too. For example, the branching, layered, fractal-like paths we can take within a city help us carry out many different tasks simultaneously.
Fractal structures also give us other kinds of useful information, like complex relationships among environmental elements. The order of an essential but non-graspable structure, like an ecosystem, is more intelligible to us because we can detect the symmetrical fractal patterns of its plants and animals—another important evolutionary need. In modern times we have a greater need for urban environments to be legible to us, and there is evidence that we do this by reading fractal relationships in buildings and details (after all, we have evolved with this sense).
Today we’re reviewing the Define 7, successor to the Define R6, a case that fell on the positive end of that scale in our review. We’re sure there’s some reason for Fractal dropping the “R,” but we neglected to ask. In "storage" mode, the chassis can accommodate up to 15 drives using optional brackets.
For thermal testing in this review, we’re testing four total variations of the Fractal Define 7 alongside all the other cases. We sometimes have complaints about things like drive sleds being made available for purchase separately rather than all being included with the case, but seven is a lot of HDDs. Obviously using the space at the front of the case for anything else, like radiators or reservoirs or an optical drive, will reduce the number of drives supported. The HDD cage under the PSU shroud fits two drive sleds, but with so many mounting options inside the case, that’s barely worth mentioning. What is worth mentioning is that Fractal has fully taken advantage of the extremely long case form factor by mounting the cage on rails that allow it to be placed anywhere from right against the PSU to flush with the front panel. Even better, the rails can be used to mount HDDs or fans directly to the bottom of the chassis as well.
The top panel shares the same snap mounting mechanism and can be removed by hooking a finger under the front corner and pulling it up. Versatile new multi-brackets allow you to convert any unused fan position to an HDD, SSD or pump mount. The new front panel features an improved reversible hinge design with magnetic latching, and the fully removable top panel opens to provide totally unhindered interior access. The results are nearly identical across the board and are within test error. We think there would be actual changes to performance if Fractal had a fan positioned lower on the front, but the lack of GPU-focused fans means that changes to the front panel have minimal impact.
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